


Hobbit Drabbles

by ewfte



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, BAMF Bilbo Baggins, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Reincarnation, Talking To Dead People
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-02
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 13:12:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8447227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ewfte/pseuds/ewfte
Summary: Everything from weird dreams to journal rambles will be posted here.---Some of this has been read by my CW teachers. I am somewhat ashamed.





	

The wizard came to him bearing the scrolls of his magical forebearers, the keys to a contract witnessed by so many eyes on one side of the arrangement and by only one pair on the other. The wizard looked sad, looked like he truly was sorry, that he truly believed the small figure before him was not guilty of the great horrors of the past. That he had not, under the power of an all consuming god-king, razed forests and people to dust.

The wizard came. Slowly, meandering in the gait reminiscent of rambling life, but steadily he pulled himself from what was not into what was in Bilbo’s view. 

The wizard came up the hill of Bag End and Bilbo closed his eyes and snared his hands heavy in the peace of home for just one last unpained breath before letting that hope, that happiness, slip away.

The wizard had arrived, as he always had, as his ancestors had, and brought with him the promise of death.

And as wizards often do, he arrived at the wrong time.

Master Bilbo Baggins of Bag End drew a lung full of smoke from his steam weeping pipe and tapped out the ash of unfinished Old Toby onto past crumbs of grey among the verdant grass of his family’s home.

He would have to look back in on his Took relatives, see which young fauntling would find the greatest fulfillment in the golden arcs holding fertile soil above the smial and false walls holding his secrets from civilized company. The wizard interrupts him.

“Good morning.”

Bilbo looks at him, critically despite his upbringing as a gentlehobbit, and sees that Gandalf has not aged in the century or so they had not seen each other. The weathering in his face is as familiar as the outcroppings of the Blue Mountains, as the winding passages of Erebor. The grey length of his hair still hangs between stately and wild and reminds Bilbo that this is no man of absolutes. His morals and wishes lie towards good, but the wizard’s way in life is a neutral as the color of his mind.

Bilbo would think it a tiring way to live, as Gandalf had no qualms of using the mortals of this world and therefore no certainty. No certainty even of his goals besides the dogged pursuit of good. However, the other minds residing in the shell of his skull have capricious twists. After he dies, Bilbo wonders, will he too ponder wildly of the scales of evil in a mind that is his but not his too.

_ ‘Maybe this time it shall end.’ _

_ ‘-uck him and his hideous face. They call us monsters and send this travesty t-’ _

_ ‘I say leave the house to that fierce lass, Primula. There’s one that’s a Took through and thro-’ _

_ ‘Finally a chance for a goddamn adventure.’ _

_ ‘Been cooped in a hole for too long.’ _

Bilbo tunes them out again, releases the smoke from his lungs in slow, contained spirals from his nostrils, like a teapot signaling an upcoming scream, a break in the silence.

“Wizard” He acknowledges with sweet clouds rolling past his teeth.

“So you do remember me. I was a good friend of your mother.”

“Ah.” Replies Bilbo.

The two stand in silence for a while, Bilbo mentally putting his affairs in order and Gandalf surveying the garden surrounding the small creature. Thick bushes of lantana are in bloom, dripping yellow orange red like molten gold. A monarch butterfly floats from its perch atop a coin sized bud and glances off the hobbit’s messy curls on its path to hydrangeas under Bag End’s awning. Bilbo doesn’t blink.

“I suppose you are not averse to joining me and a few others on an adventure?”

Bilbo sighs and threads his fingers across his stomach with an expression akin to a grimace. “I suppose I do not have much of a choice, do I?”

The wizard frowns, not guilty exactly but the twist of his mouth behind his long grey beard shows he would prefer Bilbo fall completely into the adventure with pure duty and joy. He might feel that he has saved Bilbo from this slow, steady life in the Shire, like he saved Belladonna all those years ago.

Belladonna is dead though, and Bilbo got tired of adventures in those first lives where he thought salvation for his deeds would come quickly, back when he fought for a belief, required of him or not.

Now Bilbo has seen enough war to know it’s usually petty, the bloody squabbling of prideful kings. Adventures bode of freedom and adrenaline, sure, but rarely cut through the grey static morals of life surrounding Gandalf.

That may be why Bilbo likes the Shire so much. It’s black and white here, good and bad firmly separated. Raising good gardens, indulging the faunts, giving out gifts on birthdays and retaining a well stocked pantry are all good, insignificant as they seem. The only in town arrest was seventy years ago on charges of disturbance of the peace, but was really just an end to the vicious prank war (started by the Tooks to no one’s surprise).

“I’ll be by later, then, to introduce you to the group.”

“Alright.” Bilbo replied before standing and heading towards his great green door.

The wizard called out, “You must remember the purpose you were brought forth for,  _ Bilbo Baggins _ .” He says it like a curse.

“Not all of us get multiple chances to rectify the mistakes of our path. Do not scorn those that seek your salvation.”

“I would never dream of going back on my word, wizard. My only question is, when do my sacrifices outweigh my sins?” Bilbo unlocked his smial and disappeared into its recesses.

“Old friend,” Gandalf murmured to the back of the creature his forefathers had dragged back from death, from hell, from rest to cure the world, “if only I knew.”

The green door clicked shut with anticlimactic silence. The creature inside gave no indication that he had heard the wizard’s farewell.


End file.
